Wow...and this is coming from a parent who has been through the process all the way through a top d1 college...as good as you think your daughter and her friends are..when they get out of pee wee.. (below jv level) you are going to find as you travel around the country that your team will be the ones going for ices and looking silly. Let the girls grow..develop and try not to make fun of the other girls, they may be the one that takes the last full ride on your daughters dream college team. Your kid is talented not you so just relax there is a life outside of long island pee wee lacrosse.
BOTC Industries will respond to this post with a summary of the previous dozen notes.
This has been an extremely interesting conversation and exchange on many levels. The discussion illustrates the challenges of a team with players still on the recreational level and more advanced level seeking more from the game and experience.
BOTC Industries thinks that this debate centers around three issues that have been raised.
First, the Yellow Jackets do not have an elite season that is restricted to the June/July tournament window. The thought that by playing in March the Yellow Jackets are impinging on the town team season is incorrect. Certainly, a town team can extend its season well into the summer months and so too, the Yellow Jackets can be playing in the Spring. What you are seeing is that lacrosse is slowly by surely increasing its scope to being multiseasonal and will likely be a year-round commitment in the next decade. Ring fencing the two types of teams, town and elite, into months of play is a convenient organization, but not written or practiced in fact.
Second, there is a debate as to whether the Mount Sinai coaches had the responsibility to even attend the Wounded Warrior event with their town team. Since there was no tournament schedule shared with the town team parents, the coaches clearly had no responsibility to attend. Could they have held their team responsibility in higher esteem? BOTC Industries thinks that they could have. Note however that several posts have indicated that an effort was in fact made to organize the Mount Sinai team for the Wounded Warrior event. The number of players who could not or would not be able to commit for the weekend seemed high resulting in not enough players to field the full team. At some point, the effort was just no longer worth the reward.
Third, some children/players have both the ability and desire to play beyond the town team level. While the debate has dwindled down to "athletic vs. non-athletic" players, the issue is really one of desire to play in a more competitive setting and the ability to do (secondarily). The ability could be skill based or financial, but either case, the desire is the primary driver. It would appear that many of the Mount Sinai players do not have the desire to move to a higher, next step program. As a result, the town team is being torn (as many are at these ages) between moving on and staying together. Long term, as you will see, the answer is to move on although when you are going through the situation, that decision is not always clear.
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